I'm curious about how IAC chapters are giving back to the communities in which they hold their contests.

Here in Washington state, Chapter 67 leveraged (read, "plagiarized") some ideas from our friends in the San Diego Aerobatic Club (IAC 36) and held two outreach events last year at Ephrata, our annual contest site. (I wrote about these in a Sport Aerobatics piece last summer.) Briefly, we put on an afternoon program for second-graders to introduce them to the airport and aviation. A few days later, we held a Young Eagles rally, flying 50 or so young people.

In addition to those charged-up kids, the net effect was a collection accolades — from parents, teachers, town officials — directed at the port manager, the port directors and our club. The good relations we'd had for 25+ years at Ephrata got just a bit better as a result. We intend to repeat at least one of these activities this May.

It occurs to me that this online forum is an excellent venue to share ideas about other give-back activities that go on throughout IAC. So, if your chapter is doing something nice/cool/interesting for the community in which it hosts its contest, would you post and tell us about it?

Thanks,
Jim Ward